Conventional electronic device manufacturing systems may include multiple process chambers and one or more load lock chambers surrounding a transfer chamber. These electronic device manufacturing systems may employ a transfer robot that may be housed within the transfer chamber, and which is adapted to transport substrates between the various process chambers and load lock chambers.
In order to add additional processes desired for certain electronic devices (e.g., substrate) manufacture, or to add additional processes within a particular tool, in other embodiments, two mainframe sections may be linked together with one or more pass-through chambers. Substrates may be passed through between the mainframe sections through the pass through chambers. The two mainframe sections may be operated at two different vacuum levels in some embodiments and different or additional processes may take place in the second mainframe section.
A factory interface, sometimes referred to as an equipment front end module, may be provided to load substrates into and out of the load lock chambers coupled to the first mainframe section. However, adding an additional mainframe section is at the expense of added complexity, and may require extra floor space, that may not always be available. Accordingly, improved apparatus, systems, and methods enabling higher throughput and ease of adding processing capacity are desired.